This will appear in my weekly blog entry on Sunday at
bungertingbaloner.bobnewell.net, but I thought I would post it here...
my unhappy initial experience with the Chronos Blitz II, though I will
say that once I got past the events described below, I'm happy with the
clock's overall performance.

----

A Turn of the Screw

Here's a column dedicated to something completely trivial, of no
importance whatsoever on the world scene. But it's about a major
annoyance, and is a story that at least in its essential meaning is
likely to be one shared by many a reader.

A little background information will be necessary.

I wanted a good, heavy-duty, high-quality chess clock. Now, for those
of you who probably navigated here in error and don't know about chess
clocks, they are essentially timers, and can be used for chess,
checkers, and many other two-player games. The clock is set for a
certain number of minutes, for example, and then time is counted down
separately for each player in the game. When you make a move, you press
the button on your side of the clock, and time starts counting down for
your opponent.

There is a form of chess known as "blitz" in which typically each
player has only five minutes to make all the moves in the game. Blitz
chess can get pretty wild, with players making rapid moves and slapping
the button on the clock, often with considerable force. An inexpensive
plastic chess clock with the usual lever action on the buttons will
simply not stand up to the rigors of blitz chess for very long.

I had a couple of these aforesaid plastic clocks, had played some
blitz, and was planning on playing more. The clocks weren't going to
cut it for much longer in heavy blitz action, so I decided to order an
honest-to-goodness industrial grade clock. The clock of choice for many
a blitz player is the Chronos. Handily enough, Chronos makes a clock
called "Chronos Blitz II." Just what the doctor ordered: it's an
all-metal construction, it sits low on the table for extra stability,
and it has metal "touch" buttons that respond to body capacitance--- no
levers or moving parts whatsoever. I'd seen Chronos clocks in action
and they can take everything a two-fisted blitz player can dish out,
and more.

I looked around on the internet for a good price and found one for $86
with free shipping. Rather a good deal, I thought, though keeping in
mind that the plastics clocks were about one-third the price at $29.

My Chronos Blitz II arrived in short order thanks to the efficiency of
UPS delivery. Anticipating some great blitz action to come, I unpacked
the clock and started to read the instruction manual. Now, one thing
Chronos clocks are known for is their complex setup and poor to
miserable instruction manuals. In this regard, I was not disappointed.
The manual was full of errors, misprints, missing lines of type, and
impenetrable prose. But I determined to persevere.

The clock came with preinstalled batteries, but this is something I
have come to distrust; you have no idea how long the batteries have
been in there, and putting in fresh ones is generally an advisable
move. So I looked up battery replacement in the manual. The
instructions told me to remove the four screws that hold the outer and
inner sections of the clock case together. Yep, you need tools to
replace batteries in a Chronos.

No problem, I thought. I grabbed the appropriately sized Philips
screwdriver from my bench and removed the first two screws. They were
machine screws with a flat top and a tapered head that fit flush with
the surface of the clock to make a nice smooth appearance.

Then I tried to remove the other two screws.

They turned, and turned, and turned, and did not come out.

Were the threads on the case or on the screws stripped out? That would
be surprising in a brand new unit, but then at least it should be easy
to pull or shake loose the screws. Uh... no. No such luck. Turn, turn,
turn. I couldn't even get a fraction of a millimeter of the head to
come out so I could grasp it with a fine needle-nosed pliers. I
couldn't even get a very thin flat screwdriver blade under the head to
pry it up a little.

It was baffling. What could possibly be holding the screw in place so
firmly, yet allowing it to turn so very freely? This made no sense at
all and it was starting to become more than a small irritation.

I suppose at this point I should have contacted the vendor and made
arrangements to return the clock and get a replacement. That would have
been the sensible thing to do. But I too succumb at times to "internet
impatience" --- that desire for instant gratification fueled by the
internet experience, and about which I've written before in these
columns.

So I went to heroic measures. Warranty be darned, I was going to get
those screws out! I tried something that should have worked in this
instance: gluing a disposable screwdriver to the screw head with super
glue and then extracting the screw.

The super glue would not bond to the metal! I ended up with a smelly
mess on the end of the screwdriver; fortunately the super glue was easy
enough to wipe off the screw head, and for once I didn't smear it all
over, such as on the clock case.

Not having a screw extractor, and not particularly trusting them in any
event, I determined to drill out the screws. Good bye warranty, but I
no longer cared. An $86 clock, and I was at the point of no return. You
may rightly question my sanity and judgment. I think both were
completely gone at the moment.

The screws turned out to be made of extremely hard steel, and it took
about an hour each to drill them out. I managed to do so without
damaging the clock, though I think that may have been pure luck.... if
I could be said to have had any luck at all in the course of this sad
tale. It turned out that when the screws were installed, self-tapping
into the two halves of the metal case, they were turned all the way in,
but they didn't have quite enough threading at the very top, near the
tapered head. So when fully inserted, the last thread slipped through,
and the screws rested on the bare tapered head. In trying to extract
them, the last thread wouldn't go back into the self-threaded hole, and
so the screws would turn and turn but still be tight. You learn
something every day.

This explanation is probably as clear as mud, but the bottom line is:
bad design. An expensive precision instrument suffered from incredibly
inept design in something as mundane as the case fastenings.

The end of the story is that I dug up four slightly larger screws with
non-flat, non-tapered heads, and installed these in place of the
originals. Though they don't sit flat to the case, they look just fine,
and at least they work as they should; it's actually possible to insert
and remove them without undue trouble.

But, of course, there's a real bottom line to this story. I paid top
dollar for a product that would have been effectively unusable once the
factory-installed batteries gave out. I paid top dollar for a product
that was as user-unfriendly as they come, with a so-called manual that
made things much worse rather than better. The plastic clocks, at a
third the cost, are better designed and easier to use by a long margin,
even though they aren't in the heavy duty blitz warfare category.

I'm disappointed, to say the least, with a manufacturer who is happy to
take your money and give you problems in return. Now, I'm sure there
are thousands of happy Chronos Blitz users out there. They're probably
in their first five or six hundred hours of use and the original
batteries are still going strong.

Heh heh. Just you wait, folks. Hope you have a few good, sharp drill
bits, a really good high-speed drill, and a lot of patience.

On 11 Aug 2006 08:35:20 -0700, wrote:

|...
|
|But, of course, there's a real bottom line to this story. I paid top
|dollar for a product that would have been effectively unusable once the
|factory-installed batteries gave out. I paid top dollar for a product
|that was as user-unfriendly as they come, with a so-called manual that
|made things much worse rather than better. The plastic clocks, at a
|third the cost, are better designed and easier to use by a long margin,
|even though they aren't in the heavy duty blitz warfare category.
|
|I'm disappointed, to say the least, with a manufacturer who is happy to
|take your money and give you problems in return. Now, I'm sure there
|are thousands of happy Chronos Blitz users out there. They're probably
|in their first five or six hundred hours of use and the original
|batteries are still going strong.
|
|Heh heh. Just you wait, folks. Hope you have a few good, sharp drill
|bits, a really good high-speed drill, and a lot of patience.

I bought three similar Chronos models for a tournament I was running.
These were standard Chronos models, not blitz, although they did have
the touch sensory buttons. As far as I know, the only difference between
your model and mine is the ROM program; the construction is the same I
think, low center of gravity and all. I can remove the covers on all
three with no problem.

I'm glad you found a solution. When I first read your title I thought
you might be complaining about one feature I noticed: if you hit the
button with a captured piece, it will not register. you need to touch
it with your hand. It's easy enough to adjust to that, but I can well
imagine that as a reason to grumble about it.

Drifting slightly off topic: Doesn't the standard Chronos have enough
options for playing blitz? Is your model more rugged or something? It
looks the same in the photos. Was the price lower than for standard?

This specialized game clock business seems to be quite a racket. Did
you know that among Scrabble players the clock of choice is called a
"Sam timer" and looks identical to a beige Chronos with regular
buttons? All it is advertised to do is work for Scrabble, and it sells
(at the first place I looked) for $125 plus shipping. For all the
variety of modes available on the Chronos standard, the Chronos can't
do what the Sam timer does: count down from 25 minutes, and then count
UP as part of the same timing mode to measure how much overtime to
penalize for. You could use a Chronos to play tournament Scrabble in
my opinion, but I don't know if the Scrabble community would go for
it.

http://www.wordgear.com/productInfo.asp?id=5&pid=95

David J Bush wrote:

I bought three similar Chronos models for a tournament I was running.
These were standard Chronos models, not blitz, although they did have
the touch sensory buttons. As far as I know, the only difference between
your model and mine is the ROM program; the construction is the same I
think, low center of gravity and all. I can remove the covers on all
three with no problem.

The "standard" Chronos clock is substantially longer in dimension, and
the ROM program seems to contain more options. So your experience in
being able to remove the covers may or may not translate. It is
possible that I simply had a defective unit, but the fastener design
seemed flawed--- replacing the screws with a different type of machine
screw solved the issue once and for all, but I shouldn't have had to do
that.

I bought the Blitz model because it was smaller, and fits nicely in my
chess bag (the standard model looked to be too long for the clock
compartment).

The other difference from the standard model is that the standard has a
small LED on each side of the top of the clock to show who is on move;
the Blitz has a single light that is green or red depending on who is
on move, which is not really a very obvious method.

You are right about the touch buttons. They respond to either body
capacitance, or as I now think much more likely, conductance. (I
should test that by touching the button with hand held metal object
such as a key.) But the nice thing about it is no moving parts
whatsoever. The instrument should last a really long time with proper
care.

It really *is* a very good clock once you figure it out.... and in my
case, replace the screws.
I'm glad you found a solution. When I first read your title I thought
you might be complaining about one feature I noticed: if you hit the
button with a captured piece, it will not register. you need to touch
it with your hand. It's easy enough to adjust to that, but I can well
imagine that as a reason to grumble about it.

Drifting slightly off topic: Doesn't the standard Chronos have enough
options for playing blitz? Is your model more rugged or something? It
looks the same in the photos. Was the price lower than for standard?

This specialized game clock business seems to be quite a racket. Did
you know that among Scrabble players the clock of choice is called a
"Sam timer" and looks identical to a beige Chronos with regular
buttons? All it is advertised to do is work for Scrabble, and it sells
(at the first place I looked) for $125 plus shipping. For all the
variety of modes available on the Chronos standard, the Chronos can't
do what the Sam timer does: count down from 25 minutes, and then count
UP as part of the same timing mode to measure how much overtime to
penalize for. You could use a Chronos to play tournament Scrabble in
my opinion, but I don't know if the Scrabble community would go for
it.

http://www.wordgear.com/productInfo.asp?id=5&pid=95